Archbishop of Canterbury faces final divide in Anglican Communion over gay clergy

The Archbishop of Canterbury is facing the gravest threat yet to the fragile unity of the Anglican Communion, after liberal clergy in America approved the ordination of more homosexual bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent

7:12PM BST 16 Jul 2009

Dr Rowan Williams flew to California last week to urge leaders of the Episcopal Church not to take any decisions that would create any more tension in the 80 million-strong global church over sexuality, by going against scripture and tradition.

But his personal plea was ignored as delegates at the General Convention of the national church in America effectively overturned a ban on the ordination of homosexual priests, which had been imposed in 2006. It was the Episcopal Church's ordination of the Rt Rev Gene Robinson as the first openly homosexual bishop in 2003 that triggered the ongoing battle between liberals and conservatives in the church.

Clergy, bishops and lay members of the Episcopal Church approved resolution D025, which "acknowledges that God has called and may call any individual in the church to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church".

On Wednesday, bishops in the church also voted in favour of a rite for same-sex partnerships being drafted. This goes against traditional Anglican teaching that only the marriage of a man and a woman can be blessed in church.

Dr Williams, who as Archbishop of Canterbury is a "unique focus of unity" for Anglicans worldwide, has repeatedly called for dialogue and understanding between the warring sides.

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He has championed the development of an Anglican Covenant that would spell out agreed terms of continued membership of the denomination.

But many now fear that the modernising moves of the Episcopal Church will leave him powerless to prevent the Communion splitting irrevocably into liberal and conservative factions.

Traditionalists in the US and Canada have already set up a rival province to the Episcopal Church, called the Anglican Church in North America, while a new alliance of Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, was launched in London last week to resist any liberal drift.

The Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Tom Wright, who is seen as a more moderate evangelical as well as a respected theologian, now believes the votes cast by the liberal Americans have finalised a schism in the church.

He wrote in The Times: "This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

"Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other 'instruments of communion' that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops.

"They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future – the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion).

"They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates' unanimous statement that this would "tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level". In Windsor's language, they have chosen to 'walk apart'.

"Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying 'we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules' is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled."

The Archbishop of Canterbury has so far declined to comment on the latest developments in America.